Refunds

Frequently Asked Questions about Refunds

There is a specific period of time during which students can drop courses without any financial penalties. This time frame is called "Registration," and you may drop credit hours during early, regular, or late registration without any penalty. This means that if you have been charged for a course and you drop it before late registration is over, you will see a credit posted to your student account for that course. Once late registration ends, classes can no longer be dropped, and you will no longer get any financial credit posted back to your student account to be refunded. Be sure to check the Academic Calendar for the specific dates for each term, and each session within the term. Shorter sessions will have shorter registration periods and the window to drop a course for a refund will be shorter. If you wish to remove yourself from a course after this time frame, it is called a withdrawal rather than a drop.

Course withdrawals are not eligible for refunds. If you have been charged for a course and withdraw from it, you will not see any financial credit post back to your account. Sometimes students may think that withdrawing from a course is the same as dropping a course, but a course withdrawal only occurs after the deadline has passed to drop a course for a full refund.

Generally, Armstrong sends all refunds to students, regardless of who made a payment on the account originally. There are exceptions. If your bill was paid under a third party contract, refunds will generally be sent back to the third party payor or your benefit may be reduced if you have received scholarships or other aid which conflicts with your funding agreement. In the event that your bill was paid by financial aid and your refund results from dropped or withdrawn courses, this may mean that your funding must be reduced and refunds sent back to the original source. Use caution when dropping courses if your funding is based on the number of credit hours in which you are registered; this action can change your amount due and you may end up with a larger balance than you had before.

Refunds sent to students will be either in the form of a check or, if the original balance was paid by a credit card, we may send the credit directly back to the orignal card. Refunds consisting of excess financial aid funding will be sent as a paper or electronic check only.

Students may elect to have check refunds sent to their personal checking accounts via Direct Deposit. Follow this link to find out How to set up Direct Deposit. eRefunds take 1-5 business days to reach student checking accounts

All paper refund checks are mailed to students' current mailing addresses as listed on SHIP and in the Registrar's Office. Please check on your SHIP address using the Port of Armstrong to make sure your address is correct before we mail it. Be sure to include any apartment, box, suite or building numbers on the second line of the address, and capitalize the street and city names. If you are not listed as the resident of that address, the post office may return your check to us, so be sure you are an official resident of the address you specify.

Refunds of excess financial aid are sent out following enrollment verification as long as the school has received the funding and eligibility has been verified. This process does not start until roughly the fourth week of a given term, and can be delayed if paperwork was not turned in on time or if a student has been selected for verification.

The Financial Aid office disburses funds according to their own disbursement schedule which depends on a variety of factors, but the Bursar's office processes check refunds once a week. This process starts every Wednesday with the verification of refund accuracy, and results in the printing and mailing of checks or the initiation of eRefunds on Friday of each week. Checks are mailed or sent out each Friday for refunds generated from Friday of the preceding week through Thursday afternoon. Any credit amounts posted after Thursday afternoon will be generated the following Friday. Any changes to addresses or eRefund profiles for the current week's checks must be submitted by Thursday afternoon at 3PM.

Mailed checks can take anywhere from 1 business day to 2 weeks or longer to arrive at a student's address due to variations in post office delivery. eRefunds can take 1-5 business days to post in a student's checking account. Please plan accordingly.

If your refund was supposed to be sent to your checking account electronically, verify the following:

Your account number and eRefund profile on Touchnet Bill Payment. Be sure you are checking the correct account for the deposit if you have multiple accounts.

The number of days since the refund was generated. eRefunds can take up to 5 business days to be posted by the receiving bank.

If your refund was supposed to be sent to your address, please log into the Port of Armstrong and check your address. If it is correct, then allow at least 10 days for your check to arrive. If it has been 10 days and your check has still not arrived, stop by the Bursar's office and fill out a request for a stop payment and reissue of your check. Your address will be subject to updating or verification when you request a stop payment and reissue. Stop payments may take up to a week to process, but can be completed sooner if time and research allow.

Detailed Catalog Refund Policy

Students who register for classes, pay fees, and formally withdraw from school cannot re-register for that term.

Refunds are not made for late registration, late payment or graduation fees.

A refund of all tuition and other mandatory fees will be made in the event of the death of a student at any time during an academic term.

Students who attend multiple sessions within the same semester may only qualify for a refund if they withdraw from all of their classes. Sessions are withdrawn according to the schedule of the class whose first day of class occurred earliest in the term. Students are ineligible for refunds for any sessions if one session has already been completed for a grade in the term.

Summer Semester Refunds

Summer refunds are based on percentage completed over multiple terms, depending on courses enrolled in each session. The Summer 2014 refund schedule for Session 10(A) applies to summer courses running the full ten weeks of the Summer 2014 term only. Summer 2014 Session 11(B) and Session 12(C) courses have five week refund schedules. Please see the Bursar's Office for more details if you are enrolled in multiple Summer sessions and would like information about withdrawal refunds. Due to the varying length of courses offered during the summer, refunds are based upon the individual course length. Due to the multiple lengths of summer semester classes, refunds for withdrawals and cancelled classes will be mailed at the end of the semester.